


past participle

by copperiisulfate



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 12:19:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13053858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperiisulfate/pseuds/copperiisulfate
Summary: For all the time that has passed, their past is still this fraught web of a skin he cannot entirely shed.





	past participle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lady_peony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_peony/gifts).



> I am trying to remember you,  
> and,  
> let you go,  
> at  
> the same time.
> 
> \- Nayyirah Waheed, the mourn

_You've been here before_ , he tells himself, amidst a sharp, harsh breath. _You have been through and made it out of far, far worse_.

This time, however, all his shiki are down and out of fight. They are scattered elsewhere in these woods, which was largely the motivation to wind up in these parts in hopes of distracting the yokai's attention away.

It occurs to him, as he watches his paper charms lay in disarray on the dirt around his feet, breathing hard, that it may not have been his wisest move in retrospect. He has witnessed this thing devour yokai far more powerful and numerous than his shiki so this was a risk worth taking, even if it is certainly possible that his risk-analysis isn't at its finest at the moment. He has been thrown around more times today than he can count and taken at least a few hits to the head. He's almost afraid to check for bruises afterwards, if there will even _be_ an afterwards--and that thought alone chokes a laugh right out of him. 

The yokai that is a swirl of indigo-violet with too many eyes and even more arms makes another lunge towards him and Natori knows he must dive in one direction or another--it doesn't matter where, just _away,_  but his limbs are too heavy.  The part of his mind that is watching this play out from the outside is still thinking up strategies. If only he could get behind the thing--because he _knows_ there is a blind-spot never mind that he lost his footing and missed his chance earlier. He still has a chance-- _If only you can bring yourself to_ move _!_

But his body winds up slumping down by the roots of the tree behind him-- _No. No--!_

It's heading closer and he _cannot_ let this be it. _What a wretched way to_ \--

A high-pitched _zing_  suddenly pieces the air, followed by a _crack._

The sound is a lot like that of tree-bark splitting close to his ear.

He blinks once, then twice, and a deep violet haze surrounds him, fills his lungs, making him cough violently. It lifts slowly, turns to smoke, and rises into the tops of the trees and beyond.

He can sense it before he sees it from the corner of his eye, the thing that saved him.

His body can't seem to decide whether to laugh or scowl at the sight. Apparently, it isn't in the shape to do much of anything because his eyes grow increasingly heavier despite his mental protests.

The last conscious thought before he collapses from exhaustion is of the arrow piecing the charm sitting inches from his head.

 

 

 

+++

 

 

 

When he wakes, there is the vaguest memory of a dream.

 

 

 

(A boy had looked down at him with a twinkle in his eye, his longbow slung under his arm, and that trademark arrogance stitched into his smile. 

 _We’re too old for this,_  Natori had either thought or said out loud.

It had been disorienting, the way the leaves were lit by the sun, shifting in and out of focus, making the past and present seem to coexist all at once.)

 

 

 

He blinks and his vision is still focusing. To add to his unease, he has no idea where he is.

The room is unremarkable with its simple futon on the wooden floor, surrounded by white drapery and sparse furnishings.

"So you are up at last," says a voice, a woman's, with a familiar gravely edge to it.

 _Nanase_ , he identifies it a beat later. His head is still throbbing in six separate places.

A thousand questions race through his mind but before he can begin to voice or even process them, Nanase appears fully inside the room, clad in simple black robes and practically _looms_  by his side. "I don't know what you were thinking, Natori. Even for you, that was profoundly reckless."

So he is in one of the Matoba houses then. His grip on the sheets is white-knuckled and it's an effort to keep his tone even, casual. "I suppose I am now indebted to the Matoba clan."

Nanase sounds amused when she says, "You could bear to sound a little more relieved at being alive." 

Natori looks around once more and a jolt of panic and awareness hit.  " _Hiiragi_ \--" His shiki would have a hard time crossing or being summoned within the thoroughly sealed Matoba grounds. "Where--"

Nanase holds out a hand as if to silence him. "Your shiki are fine. That Natsume boy and his wolf guardian came upon them and took care of them shortly after you were found. They should be safe and recovering elsewhere."

This serves to quell one worry but incites another in its place. "Why was Natsume there?" He feels his blood grow cold, more with anger than fear but just barely. He had purposefully kept Natsume out of this one because of the stakes and difficulty. 

Nanase says, as if reading his thoughts. "Do you realize that boy has more spiritual power inside of him than you and the head of Matoba combined? Perhaps, for now, it is yourself you should worry for."

 _You sound far too much like our mutual acquaintance_ , Natori wants to spit out but holds it in. The idea of Natsume being in the same set of woods where Natori was certain he would face his end makes his head spin. "What happened to Natsume?" His attention and outrage are so focused on Nanase that he misses the second set of footsteps in the room until the voice follows.

"Natsume Takashi is at home, resting comfortably and unharmed. It seems we cannot say the same for you."

Though the reasons have metamorphosed into wildly different ones over the years, the sight of Matoba Seiji still tests Natori's usual practiced composure, still manages to drain the air from the room as well as from his lungs. Here, the head of Matoba paints a dark silhouette in robes that match Nanase's, arms crossed and head cocked slightly to the side, seemingly making a study of the sight before him. Nanase nods once in his direction and leaves the two of them with the strained silence that follows.

"If you must know," Matoba says at length, "I had discussed the yokai with Takashi-kun the day before but did not know he would show up. Apparently, he and his curiosity followed of their own accord. I like to think it was for the best that he did not make it very far into the woods, don't you?"

Natori makes a motion to stand, slow and painstaking as it is. He knows that he has to be on even footing before they converse any further. He cannot stand the thought of Matoba looking down at him literally as well as metaphorically. He winces from the sting of pain shooting up his ribs at the change of position and tries to bite it back down. "Why?"

"Why did I discuss the yokai with him? Because he seems to be very resourceful and connected with a network of these pesky things. You do realize that they bring him information you and I will never be privy to?"

"Why did you save me?"

A flash of amusement crosses Matoba's eyes. "You really have made your mind up about me, haven’t you? A mental image that now paints me as callously standing aside watching you die."

Natori grits his teeth. “And why shouldn't you?”

“I wonder,” Matoba circles him, not unlike a bird of prey, “does it not say more about how you see yourself? What little worth you ascribe--”

“If you did it to simply mock me,” Natori fires back, effectively cutting him off, “maybe you shouldn’t have.”

“What an impressive monster you’ve made of me,” and Matoba has the gall to grin here. “It must make it easier for you, more convenient. Well, you will believe whatever answer to that question you have already convinced yourself of. Should I also then assume that if our roles were reversed, you would be happy to walk right past me, or does your sympathy towards ayakashi set you above that and make you better? No, Natori Shuuichi can never be cruel, never anything but kind. Isn’t that the portrait of yourself you’ve painted for the world to see? We must never speak of your own collateral damage along the way. Lucky for you, not many who know you today were there to witness it.”

Natori cannot–- _will not_ fall for this. Backhanded compliments were Matoba Seiji’s entire arsenal of human interaction and that was when they were on something akin to good terms. Biting sarcasm had been Natori’s and had gotten him this far in his dealings with this rotten clan. Time and time again, he returned to it like a trusted weapon. This is perhaps the reason it bites him even harder to see it mirrored in Matoba’s words now.

"Maybe I figured you would be of some use to me. Isn’t that what your twisted logic would have concluded anyway?"

"Experience doesn't lie." Natori says. "I owe you now and you'll make sure I pay you back, so the sooner we call it even...” and Natori’s words trail off when, out of a hidden pocket in his robes, Matoba brandishes Natori’s spectacles. Other than a few smudges on the lenses, they are miraculously intact.

“I just remembered that you dropped these, earlier.” Matoba holds them up and looks through one of the lenses with his uncovered eye, gazing at the only window in the room. A cryptic smile plays at his lips and Natori's flinch does not go missed. “Even if I feel you would be better off without these, don't worry, I am not actually going to snap them in half.” He gingerly opens the frames and rubs the lenses clean with his sleeve before he moves to set them on the bridge of Natori's nose and behind his ears. It catches Natori off-guard and barely gives his mind a moment to react. 

Matoba gives him another one of his long looks but this one has something older and tired creeping into its edges. It is possibly the first time in that day, if not in years, that he has let it show so openly. “I do not want or need your repayment and you are not bound to me because of this. Take as much time as you need to recuperate before you leave. Maybe, the next time you seek out a deadly solo project--”

“--I'm supposed to ask _you_  for help?” Natori cannot help but fall back into the bad habits, the old defensiveness. He can't stand how little it takes for him to regress to this. For all the time that has passed, their past is still this fraught web of a skin he cannot entirely shed. 

"I would much rather prefer that to finding your mangled body but even as I say that, we both know that your pride will not let you. We also both know that we were always stronger, more efficient,  _better_ together than we were alone." This cut of his is most certainly deliberate, but then, Natori remembers that they all generally are. "Just because you chose to forget," Matoba adds, matter-of-factly, "does not change the truth of it." 

It also does not miss its mark, like one of his aggravating arrows, traversing through an era, landing on the bulls-eye of a memory, because it reluctantly takes Natori back to a time, to a day and a place by a riverbank, and an offer made and refused.

 

 

 

( _A lifetime of protection,_ Seiji had called it, almost eighteen and as desperate as he had ever allowed himself to be.

 _A lifetime of servitude to your clan and cause,_ Shuuichi had rephrased, volleying back at him. It had been hurtful, even if it had been the truth in his eyes. The intent, in retrospect would be impossible to piece out.

Seiji's frustration had not been.  _If you could, for just_ _a few moments, step outside of your own rigid rhetoric--_

 _That’s rich, coming from you,_ and Shuuichi had thought that they weren't supposed to wind up here at all.

Conversely, this had been the only place where they were ever going to wind up, an inevitability. 

Seiji had looked up at the sky or right through it, like he could see something no one else could, a feeling Shuuichi had known intimately for most of his life. Unlike Seiji though, Shuuichi did not belong to a family who valued or even acknowledged his sight. Even if he had come to slowly learn of a community he could feel a part of, Seiji had notably been his first and, for a time, most accessible link to it.

It had been a quietly waged war within himself to accept what losing this would mean and, a guilty part of him would tell himself, the sort of betrayal it would be.

Even with his spectacles, Shuuichi could not have fully followed Seiji's gaze in that moment. His instincts told him that it hadn't been an ayakashi but a hypothetical future Seiji saw, a path that Shuuichi was swiftly setting ablaze.

For better or worse, Matoba Seiji had brought a great many things into Shuuichi's life, among them had been a reprieve from Shuuichi's lingering loneliness.

Perhaps, that had been his first debt owed.)

 

 

 

Natori bites the inside of his cheek, fighting a concoction of emotion and memory he cannot put a proper name to but feeling it with such intensity nonetheless that it rattles him to the core. His anger from moments ago feels out of place and beyond his reach. He knows he needs to leave this room, this house, the vicinity of this presence and all the reminders that come with it as soon as possible. 

 _I_ _didn't forget_ , is what runs through his mind, the unspoken answer to Matoba's earlier accusation.  _The universe seems fixated on never letting me forget._  

“I never thanked you,” is what comes out instead, and Natori hears his voice echo in the expanse of the room. It should startle him that it is far more sincere than he could have imagined under the circumstances.

It also manages to startle a laugh out of Matoba. To someone who hadn't known him better, it may have sounded a little scornful, but there’s a levity, a complicity, and even a flicker of warmth from his childhood in it, there and gone in the blink of an eye, when he answers with, "Then don’t start now.”

 


End file.
